Mobile GIS application for cloud registration and visualization of damages to the Costa Rican road network

Abstract

Costa Rica is located in a highly vulnerable area, affected by the impact of natural phenomena that cause serious damage to road infrastructure. This article explains the development of a Geographic Information System that allows recording and visualizing damages in the infrastructure of the National Road Network (Red Vial Nacional or RVN) caused by natural phenomena, by means of free software. The system has three components: a mobile application for field damage reporting, a cloud service for data storage and a web application for visualization. The mobile application was programmed using Google's open-source software development package Flutter; the storage of the data obtained with the application was implemented in the Firebase platform at a free service level; and the visualization web application was developed from GeoJSON points as layers, using the R package Shiny. This exercise made it possible to demonstrate some of the advantages of the GeoJSON format over shapefiles, the most traditionally used vector spatial data format. As a result, new tools were generated to plan the attention of damages caused by natural events in the National Road Network and to improve the efficiency of public investments, which benefits the Costa Rican society in terms of economy and road safety.